COURSE CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES:

We'll cover the entire 19th century in Russian literature, its "Golden Age."
That is to say, you'll get to read a representative selection (from the frivolous
to the lofty) of the Russian classics: Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Turgenev,
Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and a few others. The main emphasis will be on
prose fiction, although some poetry and drama is also included. The course will
be a mixture of lectures, discussion, oral and written projects. The most important
thing will be your reading of and thinking about the texts themselves and our
classroom discussions of them. Lectures and assigned readings and oral reports
will provide historical, social, ideological, and intellectual background information
to help you see the works in the relevant cultural context and to give you a
deeper understanding of the issues raised in the texts (the "what"). They will
also provide critical information about the nature of literary texts, the role of literature in society, literary movements, genres, techniques,
textual dialogism, etc. to give you a better grasp of the literariness (the "how"). Although the
focus of the course is on the literary texts themselves, the course also aims
at giving you a smattering of literary theory and a better understanding of
Russian culture.

Studying a specific body of literature will give you new perspectives on general
human questions and will make you a more informed reader of literature in general,
since Russian literature shares many features with other literatures. Another
important aim of the course is fun: you'll find that you actually enjoy reading
your assignments.

The oral aspects of the course (class discussions) are aimed at improving
your articulation of ideas and opinions. You will be formulating your own points
clearly so that others will understand and respond, backing up your points in
a convincing way, asking relevant questions, making mistakes gracefully, overcoming
your shyness, finding out how others react to the readings and your ideas, and
so on.

The written aspects of the course are aimed at making you aware of various
ways of writing and research and trying out some of them yourselves. There will
be two major options for you to choose between described in the "Writing
projects" section. All readings, lectures, and discussions will be in English.